Between Grammars
Danielle Vogel
ISBN-13: 9781934819432
Paperback
Noemi Press, 2015
$15
Review by m. forajter
Today I read Danielle Vogel’s Between Grammars (Noemi Press, 2015). I thought about people kissing and their faces melting together the entire time. I do not think this is an inappropriate comparison for this book. I mean this exuberantly. An experience that fuses & re-shapes. A moment that re-makes you. The nature of intimacy.
Between Grammars is structural. It presents language as both autonomous & dependent. It is a long prose poem, clustered in dense little blocks in the middle of the page. Words are treated as autonomous things. They clump together like magnetic poetry. We as readers must interpret the grammar of the text (even things as functional as what tense we are residing in) by overlaying our own internal grammars onto the page. Between Grammars insists that this is a holy act. A meshing. An interpretation.
(Between Grammars, 25.)
The concept of book then asserts itself as liminal. Both physical & idyllic. Writing which is so often the focus of attention, but also reading.
I mean, holding a book that is not yours.
I mean, reading a book, looking up mid-chapter, and feeling your whole life re-order itself.
I mean, people who you have never met crawling into your head and rearranging the furniture.
I mean, making friends.
(Between Grammars, 45.)
I am thinking of seed pods bubbling up to the surface of our shared primordial soup. I am thinking of gene pools and hot springs and living water.
I am thinking of putting my pen in my mouth. The same action repeated.
I am thinking, flesh of my flesh
&
less the space inside myself.
*
Writers often focus on the act of writing. The nature of making. What is forgotten is that with writing comes reading. This is the most difficult part. Writing often feels like a way to process exterior experience & amalgamate it into our bodies. How can I write in expectation of audience when I am still processing the experience for myself?
Maybe this is the wrong way to think about it: as language is fundamentally the drive to communicate, & one cannot communicate in a closed room. The drive to share hovers over every syllable.
Between Grammars asserts that language, like DNA, is the essence of the self. That with language, the body’s barriers are permeable. When I speak, I am loosened from body. Vogel reminds us that this is a great gift. That human beings can speak across the void of time & space & bodies, that I can look over at my partner & tell him very clearly that I love him. The interior crosses a boundary when we open our mouths; when we set pen to paper. We are no longer lone islands. The horror of being confined to one crowded body is gone. This is the only way existence is bearable.
Flesh had an alphabet. To keep them. Appearing in space through the speaking. The wet membrane, syllables sound. A scene splayed. A body opened. And it was so.
Between book and reader an intimate communion arises– where the stuff that makes us individuals can touch the way physical bodies can.
Books then are a sacred space. A shore line. I can approach you as an individual & spend time with you & love you in a way our bodies cannot share.
(Between Grammars & my reading notes.)
This is the hinge of the book: not sharing but intimacy. Revealing & knowing & changing.
Intimacy is risk.
Exposure of delicate insides. Of belief & want. Crowds of eyes. Unkind or willful.
It has occurred to me that sometimes another body will read the work you write, a person you did not imagine or prepare for. Reading is intimate in this way. Like reaching into a stranger’s body and touching their living heart, or stroking the spurs on their bones, or examining the flaws in their cells. This is risk.
(Between Grammars, 49.)
I am thinking of nourishment.
Of eating.
Language as particles in the sea.
Calcium laden milk for your bones.
I am thinking of sharing maps, and expanding maps, and updating maps—
one scotch-taped to the edge of another.
*
Between Grammars offers important theoretical nourishment for writers more so than emotional fulfillment. It is a book that speaks quietly, and teaches through demonstration of practice, rather than dialectical appeal. Between Grammars suggests each book we read is an intimate relationship that leaves a lasting impression and helps formulate, not only ourselves as individuals but, our internal maps for language. We are given ways in which we can think about audience and readership that is less like a crowd of Twitter followers and more like an experience with an individual. Each reader of this book will over-lay their own grammars on to the page. Each will form a unique bond. This is Vogel’s humbling lesson. As writers we strive for control. Our pages are our universes where grammar mirrors physics; truth or the governed way things are. However, all is handed over — hopefully, eventually — to an unaccustomed stranger, who brings with them laws from their own universe, for which our own houses must adhere.
m. forajter is a MFA graduate from Columbia College Chicago. Her work has been published in several magazines, including Tarpaulin Sky, Court Green, Queen Mob’s Tea House, Luna Luna, and Radioactive Moat. Her chapbook, WHITE DEER, is available from dancing girl press. She really likes Nirvana, werewolves, and medieval art.